stat() is a Unix system call that returns useful data about an i-node. The semantics of stat() vary between Operating Systems. In the platform-independent scripting tool Perl, stat() returns a thirteen-element array. From the Perl documentation:

 Not all fields are supported on all filesystem types. Here are the meaning of the fields: 0 dev device number of filesystem 1 ino inode number 2 mode file mode (type and permissions) 3 nlink number of (hard) links to the file 4 uid numeric user ID of file's owner 5 gid numeric group ID of file's owner 6 rdev the device identifier (special files only) 7 size total size of file, in bytes 8 atime last access time in Unix time format 9 mtime last modify time in Unix time format 10 ctime inode change time (NOT creation time!) in Unix time format 11 blksize preferred block size for file system I/O 12 blocks actual number of blocks allocated 

(Borrowed from http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/docs/ActivePerl/lib/Pod/perlfunc.html (http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/docs/ActivePerl/lib/Pod/perlfunc.html#item_stat))